SOMA Saintonge — Restaurant in Paris

Since the owner has taken the time to answer so verbosely, I shall provide some more objectively unwerstandable and precise criteria for my rating. The service was lovely and welcoming, and clearly this is a busy place which does both in dining and take away, which might explain the slowness. It took 15 mins to get the soup, another 15 for the bento and 20 mins more for the pork to come. We had to skip the tea for fear of being late after, which is not the restaurant's fault, but a consquence of every action taking so long.

The bento food was lacking, the tempura batter had cooled down to being stale, the edamame were not crunchy, the karaage was nice, tender inside and crunchy but again the batter was somewhat bland. The Iberian pluma was underwhelming due to an excess amount of sauce which drowned out the natural taste of the meat. The sake was lovely and I appreciate the time taken to have me taste it . I do not doubt the ingredients were fresh, merely that the cooking did not let it transpire as much. I am weary of restaurants in Paris who believe 40 euro meals per person is cheap, especially when one sets out to be an izakaya. While I did not know restaurant tickets weren't accepted, I let my wife pay so that we could settle accounts later and not take up more of your time and attention by splitting the bill, a gesture that might have been lost in the moment. My frustration came from the food not matching the rating, nothing else. I hope you will consider this as the critique it's meant to be, as I will ignore the meaningless ad hominem, and apologise for the first review which was made in lassitude and with dismissiveness. I wish you the best in continuing to improve your restaurant, and truly bringing out...

Surprised by all the positive reviews. Could tell something was ‘off’ with this restaurant. I usually just don’t review restaurants I don’t enjoy, but I wanted to weigh in and agree with the critical reflections of other diners because this space is striving to elevate the dining experience. Very clashing and overpowering flavors, most mysterious was the service.

I’ve never felt so invisible in a restaurant before, they badly spilled my drink while cleaning the bar, no biggie, but there was no offer to replace or even real acknowledgement. Kitchen left a few in progress sushi rolls in bamboo mats on the bar in our faces the entire time we were seated, like leftover food or something. On the way in someone pushed a crate of bottles onto my foot and barely acknowledged the interaction. For a somewhat high end bistro it was too cringe! I normally have a super high tolerance for weird service—people are human and you never know what they’re going through that day, but this was an off vibe.

‘Overrated’ is the word that comes to mind.

The food was extreme, like sour or clashing flavors that are not creative but rather hard to stomach. We received two orders of goma-ae and each plate tasted totally different from each other, one was too sour to even eat, the other something closer to quality. I wondered if maybe they had a new person in the kitchen of FOH, hard to explain the...

EDIT: It’s shocking to receive such a condescending and racist reply for simply sharing honest feedback. First, we live in Paris, so your assumption that we are ‘weekend people’ is completely false. Second, we travel to Japan frequently and dine at Michelin-starred restaurants, so we are well aware of what authentic, high-quality Japanese cuisine looks like. We are more than willing to pay for well-executed, thoughtfully prepared dishes, but the reality is that your food simply did not justify the price. Instead of attacking customers and making offensive generalizations, perhaps focus on improving your dishes and service. A truly great restaurant doesn’t need to insult its customers to defend itself.

ORIGINAL: Easily the worst Japanese food I’ve ever had. This place is a blatant tourist trap.

They charged an outrageous 20€ for just five slices of duck and a bowl of rice. The tempura portion was larger, but feels like a piece of dough instead of light and crispy as tempura should be. And don’t even get me started on the soba dish, which amounted to barely two bites. The only redeeming factor? The waitstaff...